The Golden Age
by JasonSpidey
Summary: It's sixty years since America has seen its legends. The heroes of old are dead and gone. Mankind doesn't have anyone to look up to anymore. And an old man finds himself forced to confront a past he'd rather forget.. DC Elseworlds, Ch. 4 now added.
1. Chapter 1

The Golden Age

The town of Walker, Nebraska hadn't seen much change in the eighteen years Sally Jennings had been alive, and she would be one to know – she'd lived there for her whole life. The town of two thousand people hadn't seen a new business since the early 1990s, when an elderly couple from Lincoln had moved there to settle down and open a coffee shop. Despite the initial doubts of locals, the shop had thrived, mostly because the residents of Walker had been quick to bring the folks into their lives once they realized that they were good people.

It was in that coffee shop now that Sally found herself, a coffee table between her and the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. Across from her sat her boyfriend of four years, Frank Josephson, a boy who she had always thought she would marry one day before fate had twisted her life in a wonderful way.

All Sally had ever planned on in life was to stay in Walker and settle down with Frank, live on a farm and raise a family, ever since she first met him in first grade (though she'd never told him as much). But her parents had wanted much greater things for her; they'd pushed her to work hard in school, eventually prodding her to send in an application to Harvard University fifteen hundred miles away. She'd never expected anything to come of it; that is, until the thick packet from the admissions department showed up in her mailbox in early April. Her parents watching, she'd torn the paper open to see the letter within, and the contents lifted her into the sky and broke her heart at the same time. A full scholarship, for four years. They'd even pay for her to fly home at Christmas time.

But if she took it, it meant she'd have to leave that old dream behind.

It had taken her weeks of deliberation, but she'd finally come to a choice. She had to seize this chance, even if it meant that she had to put her old dream on hold for a few years. But doing so might mean breaking the heart of the young man who was all she'd ever wanted.

"Frank, there's something I have to tell you," she began, eyes cast downwards onto the table.

He stared at her lovingly as she brushed a strand of strawberry-blonde hair out of her face. "Sure, Sally. What is it?"

The door jingled as old Tom Welling walked in behind them. "Old" was a relative term with Tom; though his hair had long since faded to silver, he was still built like an ox. He'd been in town twenty years; in fact, he was Sally's neighbor, running the next farm down the road – a good two miles away, but nevertheless. She'd known him her whole life, and had confided more than one secret to his kind ears. Always good for a helping hand, Tom was a throwback to days of old, "when men were gentlemen and women were ladies," as he would say with a chuckle. Their eyes met as he strolled into the shop, and when her green eyes met his baby blues, it was like he understood exactly what she was going through. He gave her a smile and a wink, and for some reason, it made her feel better.

"Anyway," she continued as Tom sat down in a booth and struck up a conversation with Jerry, the owner, "I've decided what I'm going to do about Harvard."

Frank didn't breathe. Sally could barely bring herself to meet his eyes when she finally found the strength to speak.

"I'm going."

Sally almost swore she could see his heart break straight through his ribs. Frank deflated almost instantly, but he tried to cover it just as fast; he pulled himself back up, trying to pass off his sudden grief as something – anything – else.

"That's great! You'll love it there, Sal. You're gonna do so much, I'm jealous!" The words sounded so disingenuous to her ears.

"Frank, this doesn't mean the end of us. We can carry on over the phone; we can e-mail each other, and I'll be home at Christmas and during the summer-"

He snorted, his anger beginning to bubble up. "We could, but it won't work. We can't do something like this over two thousand miles – it just won't work."

"It will when you love someone enough," she said, barely above a whisper as a tear trickled down her cheek.

But it was too late; he was already standing up to go. Sally knew it wasn't the end; he would cool down, and besides, they had the whole summer to spend together. She made no move to stop him as he brushed by her-

-but he stopped anyway, pausing in midstride as a pair of men, each uglier than the other, rushed into the coffee shop. Each one of them clutched a pistol in their hands, and they waved them across the coffee house as diners sat up and took notice.

"All right, everybody, sit down and shut the hell up!" screamed the taller of the two men, his eyes scanning the room. "We're gonna take what we want, and anybody who gets in our way eats lead, y'all understand?" Sally felt her heart beat twice as fast as it ever had before, praying that the men wouldn't notice her. She tried as hard as she could to be small as possible, biting her lip to keep from screaming at the sheer sensation of being next to these horrible men.

The second man waved his gun at Frank, five feet away and the most obvious threat, though he looked more like a deer in the headlights at this point. "Sit down, asshole, or you'll be lying down." His lecherous eyes tracked sideways to Sally; she averted her gaze, but to no avail. The man snickered. "And then maybe I'll have some fun with your girlfriend here."

Frank snarled, "Don't you touch her!" as he leapt towards the man; _idiot,_ was the only though that came to Sally's mind –

-as the gun roared, and Frank fell.

Now Sally screamed, and suddenly everything seemed to happen faster than she could imagine; she couldn't make sense of it, but it didn't matter anymore, he was dying, his blood spreading over the linoleum, she could hear the air gurgle in his lungs as he tried to breathe, she fell over him, crying –

-she barely heard the other robber cry at Jerry, but saw out of the corner of her eye as Jerry tried to talk them down; the other gun spat fire, and Jerry fell to the ground too, dead fast as the bullet had gone through his brain –

-she was looking that way now, sobbing incoherently as she tried to put her hands over the bullet wound in her lover's chest to stop the bleeding but not knowing what it would do, and she saw Tom, who had been frozen in fear, spring to his feet over Jerry's body, eyes glazed with rage as he snarled at the murderers-

-she saw both men swing their guns in Tom's direction as he stepped towards them, fists balled at his side, uncaring-

-he saw both pistols bark; at that range, they couldn't miss-

-but she didn't see Tom fall.

Neither did the robbers. All that happened was a pair of tears appeared on Tom's shirt, as if the bullets had gone through it but bounced off his skin.

But that was impossible.

But any concept of sanity quickly flew out the window as both robbers opened up as fast as they could squeeze their triggers, only to watch as each slug bounced off Tom's chest, his face, his arms, ricocheting into the floor, walls and ceiling as he closed on them.

First one pistol, then the other ran dry, and the two men could only stare as Tom stepped within arm's length of them. He seemed to stare at them for a long moment –

-and their guns were gone.

It was half a second later that the tow men each let out a scream as they realized that their trigger fingers were shattered; Sally shifted her gaze down, and saw one gun gripped in each of Tom's hands. They clenched, and the guns crumpled with a shriek of metal before he dropped them to the ground.

One of the robbers turned and dashed out the door, shrieking in fear. The other was rooted in place, unmoving, unspeaking, just shaking as Tom glared down at him in fury. His fist shook at his side as he tensed it as tight as he could; he pulled it back slowly, deliberately, readying for a final blow – his fist whipped out with lightening speed, faster than the eye could see on a course for the man's face –

-but it stopped an inch away from the man's nose.

The robber almost seemed relieved for a moment – until Tom flicked his second and third fingers out, catching the man upside the head and knocking him backwards through the plate glass window with startling force.

Tom turned, and saw Sally staring up at him, not believing her senses. Their eyes met again, and this time, his seemed to beg forgiveness; until the sound of an engine roaring split the moment, and Tom whipped his head upwards to watch the other murderer race away down the street a pickup truck. Tom set his jaw.

Then he was gone.

The air cracked like thunder as Tom suddenly appeared in front of the truck; the man slammed on the brakes, but there wasn't time to avoid an impact. The truck hit Tom with a shriek of tortured metal as the front end bent around him, the engine forcing itself back into the cab. He punched through the broken windshield easily, tearing the seatbelt off the man and hauling him out of the car as if he weighed nothing before dropping him to the pavement violently. The man looked up at Tom from his knees, his hands clasped in front of his face as the blood poured down his nose from where it had broken hitting the steering column. He couldn't bring himself to speak; he just laid on his knees and begged, tears and blood mixing. It was the most pitiful sight Tom had seen in over sixty years, and for a second, he remembered yet another reason why he had stopped doing…_this_. The fear he created, just doing what he could do.

Tom shoved the man to the ground, holding him down with his foot. "Stay down," he growled, his voice an angry baritone an octave lower than normal. He could hear the distant sound of a siren as the sheriff headed in towards town at high speed, hoping to do whatever he could. Tom knew that he couldn't be seen at the scene, and he prayed that nobody would ask too many questions. But this was probably the last day he could spend in Walker.

He stepped away from the criminal and cast his eyes to the heavens for a long moment, eyeing it carefully. He dropped his head back down and started to bend his knees – only to see Sally, covered in Frank's blood, staring at him from outside the coffee shop, eyes begging for answers but unable to speak. For a second, he straightened up, but he didn't know what to say. What on earth could he say, to this little girl who reminded him so much of his first love that it terrified him sometimes? People didn't believe in heroes anymore. Not his kind, anyway. They were a type someone like her had never known, and couldn't understand.

So he dropped back into a crouch, cast his eyes up towards the heavens, and shot skyward like a rocket, leaving a dull boom to settle over the town and the even more confused girl in his wake.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Tom wasn't sure whether to run or not when he heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. He was close enough to being done that he could have just bolted, grabbed his bag and kicked off into the sky to find some new place to settle down with a new name, but to do so would mean that the animals would have been left uncared for – and one of the few things that he could never stand was being cruel to animals.

But when he stared past the wall and saw that it was Sally walking up the door, he figured that she deserved some answers. Maybe it was just his subconscious trying to make up for the mistakes of the past, but he wasn't going to walk out on _her_.

He got to the door before she did, opening it up for her. "C'mon in, Sally," he said, directing her towards a chair inside the old farmhouse. "Would you like something to drink?" he asked, making no move away from the door.

Sally sat down in the old easy chair, but shook her head. "No, I'm good. Thank you."

"How's Frank doing?"

"He's good," she said. "The doctors say he'll pull through. Gonna have a nasty scar, though."

"That's good, Sally."

An awkward silence hung in the air for a long moment. Tom searched his mind for something to say, some way to open the conversation, but he couldn't think of one. That was part of his problem – he'd never been able to think of one. Every time he'd had this conversation – which, upon further review, was surprisingly few, especially considering the simplicity of his disguise – it had always been the other person who'd been forward about it, who'd confronted him straight up about his secret. Which, in a way, made it easier. Despite all the battles he'd fought in his life, he'd never been one to engage someone else in something unpleasant unless he had to, be it a conversation or a glorified wrestling match. But Sally wasn't playing along with the formula; she just sat there, waiting for him to say something. Tom rubbed the back of his head, as if trying to force something to flow from it.

"I'm sorry, Sally." It was all he could think of.

Sally, to her credit, didn't seem angry at him for not telling him. If anything, she seemed pleased; he smiled, almost laughing at his remark. "Sorry? What are you sorry for?"

"For not telling you, I suppose."

"Well, does anybody else know?" she asked.

Tom sighed as he looked off into the distance, for a second staring into the past. "Nobody who's still…alive."

Sally glanced back down in her shoes, ashamed of bringing up such a topic. "I'm sorry," she said, not noticing the irony.

It was Tom's turn to smile. "Don't be – it's been a long time, I've made peace with it."

Sally looked back up at him as he sat down in the sofa next to her, the awkwardness broken. "So, how long is long, if you don't mind my asking?"

Tom exhaled, doing the math in his head. "Thirty-eight years. That was when Lois passed away, back in '68. Lung cancer. She hadn't smoked since we got married, but she'd been quite the smokestack back when she was younger – I suppose it just caught up with her."

Sally stared at him, deeply. "You were married?"

Tom nodded. "Twenty-two years. Why?"

She blushed. "Well, no offense, but…I never saw you with anyone out here. Never saw you react when any girl in town batted an eyelash at you. You've just been out here alone for so long…I guess I just figured you for a lifelong bachelor."

Tom smiled - not at her, but into space. "Well, she was one of a kind. She was the one for me – after that, who could ever compare?"

Sally smiled at him, warmly this time. "That's beautiful, Tom."

"True love is something you don't see enough of these days, in my opnion."

His words hung in the air for a long minute, until Sally's confused voice broke the quiet. "Hold on a second. You said your wife died thirty-eight years ago, and you were married for twenty-two years."

Tom sensed where this was going, but he bit his tongue. "Uh-huh."

"And how old were you when you got married?"

"I was twenty-eight. She was thirty. We married late."

Sally's mouth moved as she added up the figures in her head. "So that would make you…" Her eyes went wide. "No way."

Tom could only nod. "Eighty-eight years old. Eighty-nine, come October."

Sally's mouth hung open, a fact which made Tom smile. "But I don't look a day over sixty, do I?"

"I…I mean…no! I didn't even think you were that old!"

"Call it a benefit of good heritage."

Sally's composure seemed to be coming back strong. "And the bullets bouncing off you? That part of your 'heritage?' "

He nodded yet again, feeling like a bobblehead doll. "And the running fast, and the pickup-shredding, and the leaping into the air and not coming back down. Not to mention the hearing voices three miles away, or the reading a newspaper from orbit or staring through walls."

Sally's eyes widened as she began to realize just what he might mean. "You can't…you can't be…he's just make-believe…"

Tom slowly rose to his feet, his chest swelling with purpose. He seemed to tower above her. "My name isn't Tom Welling, Sally. I was born Kal-L. last son of the planet Krypton, but the name I always thought of myself was Clark Kent, adopted son of Jonathan and Martha Kent. But most folks…"

"…most folks know me as Superman."

Sally rose to her feet, the living embodiment of shock. "We read about you in history class, but the teacher said you were just made-up by the government…nobody ever got a picture of you…"

Clark smiled. "It's hard to snap a picture of something that moves faster than the shutter. But I can assure you, I may be many things, but make-believe is not one of them."

Slowly, gently, Sally reached out towards the man before her. He made no move to resist, even when her fingertips brushed his chest. She laid her hand against him, and for a microsecond, his mind flashed back seventy years to a summer day in Kansas when another young girl, her hair streaking strawberry-blond in the sun, laid her hands against him in a meadow so far from civilization that even he couldn't hear the sounds of humanity from there. It had been the happiest moment in his life by that point – it had been the day that he had learned true love, when he'd discovered what it meant to be loved in a way that no parents – adoptive or otherwise – loved you. He could still smell her skin, the scent of lavender and grass in the air.

But he pushed away those thoughts as fast as he could manage. After all, the girl in front of him was almost five times younger than him – and human or not, to take a girl so far removed from him was a thought that made him feel ashamed. So he gently removed her hand from his chest. She blushed as she pulled away.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable – it's just…I've never touched a real live hero before." Her voice quaked as she looked away.

Tom felt himself fall at her words. He turned away, staring out the window. "I'm not a hero, Sally. And if I ever was, I'm not anymore. I lost that right a long time ago."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed. "There was a man once who…well, people called us arch-nemeses. We hated each other. His name was Lex Luthor, and there was a pattern to what we did; he would try to blow up a city or something, I would catch him and put him in jail, and then he'd break out and try it again. Nobody ever really got hurt; after a while, I almost started to respect him, like it was a game or something.

"But one day, Lex decided that he'd had enough playing. He got serious. He set off a bomb downtown that killed two dozen people – just ordinary people. Back then, that was unheard of – you just didn't do something like that. While I was busy with that, he broke into the newspaper where I worked and…killed two of my friends. He kidnapped Lois. Then, he ran off to his secret hideaway; by the time I'd gotten back to the paper, he was gone. But he made sure I knew where to find him. He figured that I'd come back there, he'd catch me in this sort of suspension field he'd created, then make me watch as he ravaged the woman I loved. But Lex's biggest flaw was always his own arrogance; no matter how big his brain was, his ego was bigger. And he'd counted on his brain being stronger than my heart.

"I tore through that field like nothing, I was so angry. I'd never been so enraged in my life; I barely had control over my own strength, my abilities. I pulled him away from Lois before he could do anything, and…" Clark trailed off, his eyes closing in regret.

Sally understood exactly what he meant. "You got serious, too."

Clark couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze. "I can still hear the sound of my fist going right through his face. That's what I see when I close my eyes at night to go to sleep. His head exploded like a cannonball went through it. And in that moment…I didn't feel a thing. No regret. No sadness. Just…anger.

"That was the day that Superman died.

"To this day, I'm still amazed that Lois stuck by me after seeing that. But she did, for over twenty years. Day in and day out, even after I'd renounced the part of me who she'd fallen in love with in the first place. But we spent all those years together, happy. I even thought that maybe, maybe, that was just who I was supposed to be. Clark Kent: husband, reporter. Nice guy.

"But when she died…it was like I lost so much of what had made me human. The name of Clark Kent didn't mean anything anymore. Nothing meant anything. I spent years just wandering the globe, a man without a name, without a past – just a face in the crowd. A ghost. As time went on, I began to wonder if maybe I really was Superman inside after all, that maybe my place was really back here, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way – the things my parents always taught me to believe in. So one day, I came back to America after all those years – to find I didn't even recognize her anymore.

"So, I renounced everything that I had been. I stopped using my powers. I contended myself with settling down somewhere where I could start anew, with a new name. A new life, somewhere that reminded me of the home I used to know. Walker just happened to be the first place that fit."

Sally digested it for a while. Her next question, though, caught him off-guard. "So, why are you telling me?"

Clark blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You've gone all these years on your own. You clearly can take care of yourself, and if you didn't want anyone to know who you are, you would have been out of here faster than anything once you heard my car pull up. Nobody would have ever believed me, anyway, if I'd told them that somebody stopped a robbery by bouncing bullets off their chest. But you decided to stay. To tell me everything."

The girl would have made one helluva reporter, Clark thought. "Because I'm sick of running. Because I liked things the way they were here, and I figured somebody ought to understand. Most of all, maybe, because you remind me of someone who showed me a lot about myself and taught me to never be afraid of who I am. I haven't done much to make her proud, either."

"Lois?"

He shook his head. "No. Her name was Lana, and she was the first girl I ever loved. She grew up in the same town as me, and we were…everything to each other. Friends. Enemies. Pals. Saviors. Even lovers. My parents were the ones who always told me to use my gifts to do the right thing and fight for what's right…but she was the one who gave me a real reason to fight for it. I owe her a lot."

Sally just smiled. Beamed, actually "Wow."

Clark looked over at her. "What?"

She blushed. "Well…it's kind of cool for Superman to tell you that he reminds you of his first girlfriend, y'know?"

He laughed. Not just a chuckle, but a full-blown howl of joy. Before he realized it, he was breathless from it, falling backwards into his chair to keep from collapsing as all the stress and tension he'd kept bottled up for years flowed out. Sally started laughing, too; she couldn't help herself, his joy was just so…beautiful. It was like seeing a plant which hadn't blossomed in years suddenly open up to reveal the most amazing flower.

As they wound down, a thought hit Sally that cut her laughter short. When he walks out that door, she realized, I'll never see him again. That's the end.

"Clark?" It felt weird to call him that.

"Yeah, Sally?" He wiped a tear of joy from his eye with the back of his hand.

"What are you going to do now?"

The smile ran away from his face. "I don't know.

"I guess I'll just move on. There's got to be somewhere else I can set up some roots, live out the rest of my days. Another town where nobody knows me."

"Why?" Her question seemed so naïve, but somehow…there was a deepness to it that was hard to understand.

Clark, for one, didn't really have a good answer. So, as he'd always done, he told the truth as best as he was able. "'Cause there's nothing else to do."

"That's not true." The steel in Sally's voice surprised him. "We both know it. Just because you did something once that you're not proud of doesn't mean you have to exile yourself for the rest of your life for it. You said you never really knew who the real man was, Clark Kent or Superman – but right now, you're neither. You're just a passing traveler. And you're supposed to be so much more than that.

"If I could do what you can do, Clark…I don't know just what I'd do. But I know I wouldn't spend my life hiding in Nebraskan farmhouses. The world out there needs its heroes – it needs people to look up to. _I_ need people to look up to. Am I supposed to look up to the politicians? The movie stars? The supermodels? The world needs people like you to inspire it. It needs its hope. And you…you can do more to bring hope than anybody else on this planet. There's no one like you out there. You've spent the last forty years running from who you are inside – don't you think it's time to stop running?"

Clark could only stare into her eyes, amazed at the depth that could come out of such a young soul. For a moment, he wondered if this was someone other than Sally talking to him; he'd never been a very religious man, but in that second, he could have sworn Lois might well have taken over the girl in front of him. But that wasn't likely. Sally was, upon second thought, just the latest strong woman to step into his life.

And, like his mother, Lana Lang, and Lois Lane, she was also spot on.

Slowly, carefully, he stood up and walked towards the door, motioning Sally to follow him. With her close behind, he walked across the driveway and over to the barn. The storm cellar doors opened with a creak as Clark swung them wide, turning on the dim light before descending with Sally close on his tail. He walked steadfastly, purposefully, across the cellar, stopping in the middle of the floor. Smoothly, easily, he punched through the wooden floorboards and tore them aside, reaching into the hole and pulling out an old steamer trunk. He flipped the catches, and opened it with a hiss of escaping air.

Inside, atop a pile of old clothing, sat a blue-and-red outfit that could only be described as a "costume."

Clark unfurled the upper half of it with a flourish, airing it out. Even in the darkness of the cellar, the crimson "S" on the suit's chest seemed to stand out. He held it up for Sally to see. "What do you think – too old-fashioned?"

Sally only smiled. "More like classic. I don't think anybody would want to see you in anything else."

Clark looked down at the costume in his hand. "You still think this is a good idea? I'm not nearly as young as I used to be."

"My dad has a saying: half of infinity is still infinity. You're still so much stronger than the rest of us – I don't think many of us will make a qualm about the size of the mountain you're lifting."

His eyes closed for a long moment as he took a deep breath in, then let it out. He opened them up again, and suddenly, Clark Kent disappeared in a blur of blue and red. The man standing before Sally now was so much more than any ordinary man. It seemed as though time had stopped as a gentle breeze came down the stairs and tickled the cape, making its tips rustle.

He smiled. "Think I look okay?"

Sally shook her head, amazed. "You don't have anything to worry about…Superman."

"Clark," he corrected her. "It was always Clark to my friends, Sally."

Together, they strode into the sunlight again, the yellow rays causing the costume to burst into living color. For a moment, the duo stared off at the horizon, where the sun was beginning to head towards its day's rest.

"You realize, I can't ever come back here." His voice was somehow stronger now. "So far as the world can know, Tom Welling is gone."

"I know," Sally said. "But it doesn't mean we can't still talk, does it? I mean, with computers and everything…"

He turned to her and smiled. "It's only a little more than a hundred miles from New York to Boston, too. If you need somebody to talk to, I'll be there."

"Faster than a speeding bullet?"

"Faster than a speeding bullet."

"Take care of the animals for me, okay? I'm sure your parents can make room on their farm. I can give 'em some money if they want, but I just don't want them to be left alone here." His voice returned to the softer, gentler quality it had before.

"I'm sure they won't mind," Sally said. "You've been a good enough neighbor, I can't imagine why they'd want anything in return."

"Well, in any case-" he reached behind his shoulders and pulled out a set of keys from where Sally could only guess –"give them my truck. It's old, but it still runs fine. Should be good for a few hundred dollars at the least."

"I can't take your truck," she protested.

He only grinned. "Why not? It's not like I'll be using it."

The sun faded a little further towards the western horizon. The wind kicked up again, sweeping into their faces and blowing the smell of spring into them. In the fading light, Sally glanced over at the man next to her, standing before the endless fields of wheat, his red cape flapping in the breeze and his eyes staring off into the distance. And for a moment, she knew what it was like to believe again. To believe in heroes; to believe in the truth, and justice, and all those old-fashioned things that people talked about but never seemed to do anything with anymore. She knew that he was doing the right thing; she only hoped he knew it, too.

In all honesty, Sally had expected him to leap off into the air right then and there, but what he did next surprised her; he reached back into the same pocket he had pulled his keys from and withdrew a faded photograph, folded into quarters. Lovingly, he opened it up and handed it off to her. In the image – black and white – a black-haired woman in a wedding dress stood on an altar next to a much younger version of the man standing next to her – only instead of a red-and-blue costume, he wore a black tuxedo and a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses. The two of them beamed into the camera as they wrapped their arms around each other.

"That's Lois," he said softly. "Our wedding day. Happiest day of my life. I haven't gone a day since she died without looking at that picture."

Sally handed it back to him. "She would be proud, Clark."

He stood tall into the wind as he smiled out of the corner of his mouth wistfully. "Yeah. I like to think so."

He turned to Sally and gently kissed her on the forehead before embracing her. "Goodbye, Sally. Thank you for everything."

"Don't mention it."

Without a word, he took a step back, crouched down, and leapt upwards into the sky. He threw Sally a wave; as she waved back, she realized that for some reason, she was crying.

Then he turned off into the sunset – and Superman was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

He barely recognized the city after all these years.

Superman still knew how to get there, of course; he'd flown to Manhattan from every angle and latitude, and from it every direction of the compass. For years, even after he'd quit his career in heroics, it had been his compass north; the point at which his calibration was taken. As much as Superman belonged to America, New York City was the place he'd always considered his home.

But he hadn't laid his eyes upon it since the late 50s, when he and Lois had moved out to a house in Virginia in order to help with her breathing problems. The doctor had said the country air and warmer weather would help her, but he didn't have any idea of the damage. Clark had known; he'd watched the cancers grow in her lungs for years before they got married and he was able to convince her of the damage that the cigarettes were doing. After all, nobody had every heard of cancer in the 40s; if Clark Kent, average newspaperman, when he told her that her own body was turning against her as a result of her bad habit back then, he'd have been laughed out of the building.

He'd seen pictures, of course. Watched movies with the city in it, seen it on TV. He'd even considered coming back one a couple occasions, when it seemed like he might be most needed: the blackout, the riots, September Eleventh. Each time it had happened, he had shaken with rage in his seat as he watched on TV until he couldn't take any more, at which point he would turn it off, go over to some secluded place and cry. When Lois had still been with him, she'd been the one who understood, who comforted the man of steel with a heart of glass; but since she had passed away, there'd been no one left to comfort him. So he'd just withdrawn further and further into himself, and into the emptiest parts of the country.

But now, as he soared over the horizon and saw the city arising to the west, it took his breath away. It seemed so much taller, so much bigger than it had before. Of course, the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and Statue of Libertv were all were they had always been, but now they were surrounded by more – everything. It seemed like a forest, a living mass of trees that stretched higher and higher into the heavens. Be gone for a week, and you don't notice any change; come back after fifty years, and everything's so much taller than you remember it.

He was glad he'd taken the time to fly around the world before coming back here. He'd needed the time to think everything over. Though he'd known the gist of what he was going to do when he'd taken off from Nebraska, he'd spent the several hours slowly circling the world planning out what he was going to do when he got there. Clark Kent was long dead, supposedly claimed in a plane accident during a Caribbean getaway three years after his wife's death, but the old disguise would still work under a new name if he needed it. But he wasn't sure that he would; after all, the persona of meek, mild-mannered Clark had always been the one he'd assumed to live a normal life and get close to others; nowadays, someone like that would seem more out of place than – well, an alien. Maybe he could just spend all his time being Superman now.

He'd also need a place to stay. He didn't need to eat – the sun, the source of his amazing powers, effectively kept him fed; however, he could still eat when he wanted to, and he had always enjoyed a good apple pie or chocolate bar – but finding a place to stay might be a problem, what with no source of income. He supposed he could always sleep in the park, atop a building, or even off in the hills up north if he wanted a little peace and quiet, but even his invulnerable back had grown used to the feel of a comfortable bed.

_No point in worrying about it_, he told himself. _Just like Ma and Pa always said, things'll work themselves out in the end if you just be yourself and do what's right._

The sun had long since set here; 3:30 in the morning, according to a clocktower his telescopic eyes discerned in Connecticut as he closed in on the city. He didn't feel tired, unsurprisingly; his muscles had, quite honestly, _never_ been tired in his life, and the only time he'd ever felt mentally run-down was after three days of non-stop consciousness and activity. But usually, in the later hours of the morning, a sort of dullness crept into his mind, sticking around until the sun rose and burned it off. Not today. Today he felt only exhilaration.

Superman slowed down to half the speed of sound as he swept underneath the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks grumbling across in the early morning. New York had always been the city that never slept to him, and the 21st century hadn't changed that in the slightest. Even at this hour, street sweepers cleaned the roads, garbagemen removed waste from street corners, delivery men dropped off the new day's supplies to merchants across the city. Subways still chattered across their tracks, buses still groaned their way down the avenues. He could hear all of it, if he opened up his ears.

So he did, and he remembered. And the Man of Steel closed his eyes and smiled.

He swooped triumphantly past the Statue of Liberty, soaring around her once to give her a once-over. He'd always loved flying out to see her when he'd been in the city; the first time he'd given an interview to a certain Ms. Lane, he'd brought her out to the torch to talk. Of course, that had been when anyone could still climb up to the flame; nowadays, people couldn't even get into the statue itself.

He flew northwards, passing over the Battery before moving up over Wall Street and the newer skyscrapers there. Off to his left stood the half-constructed Freedom Tower; only a few months into its building, and it was already as tall as the neighboring buildings. Superman weaved back and forth across the island as he went north, trying to peer into every neighborhood and listen in to see what had changed. So much was different; the Village, once a hellhole, had been gentrified to the point of almost becoming a caricature of itself. Chinatown was pretty much unchanged. Chelsea was gayer than ever. Hell's Kitchen, too, was being sweetened up; according to a signfront he discerned from half a mile up, the whole neighborhood was being renamed "Clinton." Superman shook his head. Nobody had any respect for traditions anymore.

Ahead of him lay the Empire State Building, once and again the tallest building in the city. He looped around it once, twice, three times; the beautiful lights on the outside had been shut down over three hours earlier, but it was still quite a sight. He alighted atop the radio beacon on the very peak of the skyscraper, as he had done so many times when he was younger, and stared out at the city before him. His city, once again. She deserved nothing better than a Superman. It was his to protect, his to serve – his to bring hope to. He intended to do nothing less.

A high-pitched shriek cut through the night air; his ears, having been attuned to the sound years earlier, quickly gave him a vector on the sound. North, and west; Central Park, not too far from the Museum of Natural History. He was off like a shot, his slipstream rocking the antenna behind him. Closing in on the sound at twenty miles a minute, he heard more as he closed in; the sounds of a scuffle, of a woman fighting back, of a man cursing, all Doppler-squeezed into frequencies high enough that human ears couldn't even hear it. Superman gazed towards the location of the sound, and pierced the heavy trees with his X-ray vision; he heard the sound of the woman falling backwards, and saw:

A young woman, no more than twenty-five, lying on her back having been thrown to the ground.

A man, late forties, scruffy looking, staring at her in desperation.

A backpack, its strap torn, lying in-between them.

But what he noticed most of all was the silver handgun in the man's hand, aimed at the woman. Superman didn't recognize the make, but he knew what it was. The click of the hammer locking back rang in his ears as the woman cowered in fear; the man's finger tightened –

-and Superman moved.

He landed between the two of them just as the bullet reached where he was standing; the full-metal jacketed round bounced off him like a spitball, flying off into the woods. The gunman found himself staring directly into the bright red "S" on his chest. Two sets of jaws dropped, neither of them Kryptonian.

The gunman, thinking maybe he'd missed somehow, fired again; from ten feet, he didn't think he could miss. But the man in blue-and-red didn't go down; he just stood with his hands on his hips as the would-be mugger fired round after round at him to no effect. He looked, of all things, bored with it all; the gunman could have sworn he saw the caped man suppress a yawn as he emptied his magazine at the bright symbol on the outfit's chest. The gun clicked dry, but the man, shocked, didn't even notice; he kept pulling the trigger, dry-firing the pistol again and again as if maybe that would do some good.

Superman reached out and grabbed the gun from the man's hands, and crumpled it in one fist before passing it back to the stammering criminal. He was just about to reach out and tap the man out for the police – when the gunman's eyes rolled up in their head of their own accord, and he slumped to the ground.

Superman loved that part of the job.

He turned around and offered a helpful hand to the young woman behind him; her only response was to stare at him in shocked suspicion. She made no move to get up, but merely scanned the stranger up and down, from his wind-tousled silver hair to his red leather boots.

"Are you all right, miss?"

The voice was deep, but strong and resonant, almost like a bassoon. She could only stammer out a weak response. "Ye-yeah, I'm…fine."

Slowly, she reached out and grasped her hand, and he pulled her up; it felt like she was slowly being pulled up by an industrial crane. "How…how did you…who are you?"

He just smiled. "Folks called me Superman, a long time ago."

She just stared at this man before, a man who had appeared from nowhere and saved her from certain death only to claim to be a man long since lost. "But…Superman's dead…" she stammered.

The stranger shook his head, and uttered two simple words. "I'm back."

He reached over and picked up her bag, brushing the dirt off it before handing it back to her. "Here you go, ma'am. You should try to stay out of the park at night; it's not safe for a young lady like yourself."

She barely heard him. "Uh…yeah, sure."

"You take care now."

Then, to the woman's astonishment, the stranger leapt up into the sky and hovered long enough to give her a wink before rocketing back off into the sky above.

Patrick O'Leary stumbled out of the bar at around four o'clock in the morning, enough booze in him to kill a horse. He'd been drinking for about eight hours at that point, after receiving a notice from his boss that his services as a salesman at the 80th street Best Buy would no longer be needed. The management was insisting that he cut back on employees, his boss had insisted, and Pat happened to be at the bottom of the list. Against his better judgement, Pat had proceeded to wander from into the nearest bar and wipe out both three and a half years of sobriety and a good portion of his checking account. He knew that his wife would be furious when she found out, but then and there, he really didn't care.

As he stumbled out of the bar into the street, he slumped against a lightpole for a few minutes, trying to get his bearings. The subway stop was seven blocks away, too far to walk in his condition. Better to call a cab, yes; have the driver take him home rather than risk spending hours wandering around. The street was relatively deserted, though; so, in order to be sure that he didn't miss any cabs that went by, he reasoned, he should be out in the middle of the street. He began drunkenly walking into the avenue – foolishly, without looking in either direction.

He looked up at the sound of screeching brakes to see a Chevy bearing down on him far too fast – even in his state of mind, he knew it would hit him – but he was frozen in place, a deer in the headlights – the car was almost on top of him –

-when the world turned upside-down around him as he felt himself scooped up and torn away from the pavement as if blown away by a gust of wind. The car fell below him as he rose upwards into the air, the wind blowing on his face and whooshing past his ears. He had to be dead, that was the only option that seemed logical. The car had hit him, he'd died, and his soul was heading up to heaven. And the man holding him up must be an angel.

But since when did angels wear red capes?

Superman could barely bring himself to face the man who he'd scooped out of the path of the speeding car. It wasn't so much the way he looked as the smell of him; his breath was painful for a normal human, let alone a man who can smell things better than a dog can. He turned his head away just a little, holding the man at arm's length. "Are you all right, sir?"

The drunk could only stare at him. He hadn't blinked in about a minute, and Superman was beginning to wonder if the man had gone into shock; it hadn't ever happened to him from scooping someone up so fast, but it had always been a fear of his. Luckily, the man's eyes fluttered back into recognition when Superman jostled him a little; the Man of Steel breathed a sigh of relief to himself. "Are you okay?" he repeated.

The man didn't answer the question, but rather slurred out an altogether unrelated statement. "You…yu're Sooperman! But…yu're just make-believe! My daddy, he said he saw yew once, long time ago, but I alwaze figured he wuz...jus' pullin' my leg!"

_I seem to be getting a lot of that, _a sarcastic voice in the back of Clark's head said.

Superman just smiled as he lowered himself and the man to the ground. "I was gone, sir, but I've come back. And I intend on sticking around this time. You should get home, sir; your wife is probably waiting for you."

"How'd you know I wuz married? Oh, wait – " Pat snapped his fingers – "You probably used yer x-ray eyes on my wallet, right? Yeah, that's a good picture of Suzie in there. You wanna see it again, Sooperman?"

Superman's eyes flicked back over to the man's wedding ring again before looking Patrick in the eyes. "That's all right, sir. I've got other places to be."

And he leapt up into the sky, heading eastwards. He stopped over the river for a few seconds, and listened in on the sounds of the city, until he heard what he was looking for: sirens, coming from…Brooklyn.

The apartment building's upper four floors were already engulfed when the first fire truck screeched to a stop outside the building. Lieutentant John Aganetti let out a word that the nuns who'd taught him at St. Mary's parochial would have berated his knuckles for saying as he saw the flames licking at the top of the building; a fire like this could easily burn hot enough to bring the roof down on the building, causing it to collapse. Aganetti had had friends who'd gone into the World Trade Center and never come out; he had no intention of sacrificing any of his men in the same fashion. So long as they could get everyone out, he'd do his best to fight it from the trucks, but no way was he sending any FDNY officers into that towering inferno.

Besides, he told himself as he glanced around the crowd outside the building, it looks like most of the people managed to get out. Dozens of people, most of them half-dressed or pajama-clad, were staring at their home as it burned in the early morning night. Most of them had that faraway look Aganetti had seen all too many times; the distant eyes, the half-opened mouth as everything they owned went up in smoke. The look of someone who couldn't believe what they were seeing.

He was just turning to one of his men to tell them to get the pump started when a shrill cry broke through the air, causing everyone to whirl in surprise. Aganetti tilted his head up instinctively towards the sound, only to have his heart fall in his chest. There, head sticking out the top floor window, was the face of a frightened boy, gesturing frantically and screaming at the top of the lungs from the only unengulfed room of the top floor. The boy's mother, suddenly realizing where her son was, screamed his name and leapt towards the building, only to be held back by her husband and a pair of firefighters.

Aganetti let out another choice expletive as he whirled on his second-in-command. "Get me an airpack! Now!"

Dutifully, the other man yanked an air tank off the truck and passed it over to his commander, who began strapping it on with expert skill. "Now, if I'm in there for more than twenty minutes, you send somebody in after me, okay?" Aganetti grinned nervously he buckled the chest straps over his Nomex jacket. "Ella's birthday is next week, and I want to be sure that her daddy's there to see it."

Suddenly, a voice came from behind them. "In that case, perhaps I should go in there."

Neither man recognized the voice – the deep baritone wasn't that of anybody on their team. They whirled in unison on the speaker – only to find themselves staring at his boots, six feet off the ground.

For the first time since that tragic September day years before, Aganetti found himself wearing that same expression of disbelief that he saw so often.

Superman gazed down at them from his hovering pose, cape billowing around him as the heat of the fire caused the air around them to move. No smile stretched across his lips; his mouth was set tight as he glanced back up at the building, eyes staring through it. "The building's too weak from the fire already; if you send anyone in, there's no way they'll make it to the top before it goes down." He glanced back at the two men. "It'll just take a couple – "

But he was cut off as a crash roared from the top floor, the side of the building beginning to cave in on itself. The little boy disappeared back into the building with a shout as he backpedaled from the window. For a moment, his shock over seeing the flying man was forgotten; Aganetti just pointed towards the window, about to shout an order to the flying man (though, he noted ironically, he really didn't have any right to), but he was already gone, smashing through a lower floor window faster than the eye could see.

Once inside, Superman took half a second to gaze up through the building with his X-ray vision to make sure he was in the right spot. _No support beams in the way, nothing that would make the building go any faster if it got smashed around. Might ruin a few folks' floors, but nothing much that can be helped about that._ He'd learned long ago that trying to enter a burning building through the wall on the floor where it was already on fire only exacerbated the collapse, and at the time, there weren't any windows on that floor that were more accessible. This was the best way.

He leapt upwards, flying through one floor after the next, arms extended in front of him to clear the way as he plowed through flooring, wood and metal. Seven, eight, nine stories went by in a fraction of a second until he smashed up through the final three floors, already ablaze, and into the room where the young boy was cowering on the floor, staying low and clear of the smoke. _Smart kid, _he thought. _They never used to teach kids to do that._

Superman crouched down next to the boy, underneath the smoke, and gave him his warmest smile. "It's gonna be okay, son," he said kindly, and scooped up the boy in his arms. He made no note of protest; _there's probably a good chance he thinks he's dreaming,_ Clark thought to himself as he wrapped his cape around the boy tucked under his left arm. _Kids usually tend to let their imaginations run more wild than adults in these sorts of situations, and I'm enough to make anyone think they're hallucinatging._

Getting out of the building would be a little different than getting in. he didn't want to take the boy back through the hole in the floor; it wasn't big enough, anyway, for the two of them. And if he was going to have to expand it to get out…well, there were faster ways of doing that.

Superman hit the exterior wall of the building with his right shoulder at fifty miles an hour, more than enough to send the weakened bricks and mortar flying. He quickly moved well out of range of the heat before untucking the cape from around the child. "You're going to be fine," Superman said, again sending the boy a smile. This time, though, the kid did something unexpected. He smiled back. "Thanks," he squeaked out, his voice going into the higher pitches out of excitement at the flying man holding him. He'd been saved by Superman, the greatest hero ever!

Superman lowered himself to the ground in front of the boy's parents, handing the child off to his mother, who scooped him up and held him tight enough that Clark half-wondered if the child was going to burst. Her husband grasped Superman's hand and shook it firmly, still astonished at what he just had seen. "Thank you so much, pal. Without you…how can we ever repay you?"

Superman gladly returned the handshake. "No need to repay me, sir; just part of the job."

The other man seemed to catch onto the words, for it seemed that he only noticed the costume just then. He glanced up and down; the cape, the boots, the tights, they ere all there, just like in the drawings and on the action figures he'd had as a little kid. But it was too good to be true. "Are you...really…him?"

Superman nodded, and chuckled. "I'm getting a lot of that tonight."

The brief moment of humanity broke the tension, and the other man laughed, too. Behind the crowds and the barricades, Superman could hear the sounds of vans pulling up and reporters shouting to each other, their news crews ready to take image of the miraculous rescue they had only heard about. His legs tensed instinctively, ready to flee the scene before anyone could get a good picture of him as he always had. But then, thinking about it, he stopped. What was the point in running? He had no secret to protect anymore. Nobody close enough to strike at, nor anyone who would want to strike at them; his friends and enemies were, for the most part, a lifetime away. Why not let them get a clear look at him?

_In fact, I'll do them one better._

He turned back to the fire and leapt into the air, soaring upwards and smashing back through the building on the middle of the burning floors. His foot hit the floor, and smashed a hole through it; the force caused a chain reaction, taking out a good-sized chunk of burned flooring and sending it crashing down. His fist did the same with the floor above him. He wrapped his cape around himself, and began spinning around in place. Faster and faster he twirled, thousands of revolutions per minute until he had created a cyclone around himself, sucking the oxygen and the heat in towards him and spinning it around fast enough that the flames couldn't get their grip on anything. Then, without slowing down, Superman smashed skywards, rocketing up into the air at a hundred feet a second and pulling the fire behind him in a corkscrew of burning embers and orange light. From the ground, the building looked like a volcano that had just erupted. The news crews, families and firefighters all cheered at the top of their lungs.

The fire out, Superman dove past the scene one last time, slow enough that everyone could take a good look at him thirty feet off the ground as he waved to the people below. A hundred cameras followed him from below, clicking away pictures and video frames that within minutes were all over the TV and the Internet. Superman was back in a big way. And just like the first time he came around, the world wopuld never quite be the same.


	4. Chapter 4

News traveled far faster these days than it had when he was in the business, Clark reasoned from his vantage point high atop the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in the 40s, news would take hours to circle from one side of the world to the other – it was more than easy for him to fly from China to New York and arrive back at the paper with plenty of time to spare before the events he'd seen or been involved in had arrived there. Nowadays, though, with satellites, fiber-optic cable and the Internet running all across the world, information could be communicated across the face of the Earth in a fraction of the time it would take him to fly that distance – and he could still fly pretty fast when he wanted to.

_It's like something Brainiac would have cooked up, _he thought about the information revolution which had seized the planet in his absence from the public eye. _Webs of information, almost infinite quantities of it, being beamed and shot across the planet. Anyone can be connected to it from anywhere. People depend on it for their lives. And without it, the world would crumble. _It was amazing to him, how quickly things could change so drastically. He'd know what was going on, of course, years before he ever decided to put the red-and-blue back on; he did watch TV, after all, and he listened to the radio with religious fervor. But his knowledge of these changes weren't restricted only to his own electronics. He'd heard plenty of conversations – thousands, even in the small town of Walker – where people talked on their cell phones, discussed video games, talked about the things they had bought on the Internet.

The biggest difference, though, was the way things looked. Back when he ahd been growing up in the country, young Clark had often climbed up to the top of the silo and gazed out across the landscape. Several miles away lay the only radio transmitter in town, home of Smallville's only radio station, and Clark had loved to climb up there and watch the radio pulses flashing from it, growing brighter and dimmer dozens of times a second along with the music. In time, he'd even learned how to figure out what people were saying over it, just by comparing the patterns of flashes coming off of it with the words coming out of his radio. But that was back seventy years earlier, when the world – especially smalltown America – had been a very different place.

Upon coming to the city, he'd found himself bombarded by radio signals seeming to come from every block in town. Deciphering the transmissions back home had been simple; there was just one source, and it projected clear and true. In New York, though, there were so many frequencies bouncing off walls and asphalt that they were mixing together into colors and patterns that just seemed like jibberish, at first. With time, he'd managed to make some headway against it, eventually learning how to read the different signals and separate them from one another the way a child learns to separate letters and words into sentences.

But all that was nothing compared to the present day. If Smallville had been a man with a flashlight blinking on and off, then New York sixty years before had been the fireworks on the Fourth of July – but the modern metropolis was the night sky, a million stars glimmering in the darkness all at once. Trying to make any sense of it would have been as futile for him as trying to move the sun – and even with his immense strength, even he couldn't do that. Cell phones, radio antennas, TV stations, satellite transmissions, radar dishes – each and every one of them blasting beams of energy into the air that only he could see. It was taking some getting used to.

And they'd been especially busy, as of late. Word had already spread across the globe about his return, the man who'd been called the greatest hero of all time coming out of nowhere. People wanted answers, and the news was full of people without them. Where had he been? Where were his allies, his enemies? Would his return summon forth a new wave of super-heroes, as had happened the first time? What had prompted him, after all these years away, to return? Everyone had something to say about it. Some people blasted him as a relic of a long-lost age, as antiquated and pointless in this modern age as a Model T in the Indy 500. Others heralded his return as a resurgence of the values of earlier, the morality of a purer, cleaner, more Rockwellian America. But what they never knew was that Rockwell hadn't been painting reality any more than a comic book artist; his iconic works of an America that everyone assumed had never existed had never truly existed. There had never been one country, united and idyllic as everyone thought there was. Even back in the "golden age," as more than one person had called it, things were never as clean as they seemed with the distance of generations and years. Women swore and men beat their wives; children vandalized and destroyed property; good men killed sometimes, and bad man did worse. But everyone else had forgotten about all that.

Everyone except Superman.

So, half a century later, Superman didn't want to usher in a new "era of values" as many of the politicians were now prattling on about. He didn't want to preach to the people of the nation; that was hardly his place, no matter what planet he came from. He was there, just as he always had been, to help those in need. To save those who needed saving and protect those who needed protecting. To fight for truth, justice, and the American Way.

But as word of his triumphant return spread across the globe, Clark's thoughts drifted back to a thought that he'd had more than once in his life. He wondered if maybe, there was something greater he was supposed to be doing with his powers. Of course, he'd never stop saving people, but he wondered if maybe he could be something greater than just a man in a leotard to them. Maybe, just maybe, he could bring them something that they really needed.

Hope.

Of course, he had brought hope before; but that had been a different time, a time of miracles and dreams. Back when he'd first appeared, it was the dawn of a new era for America; a world where anything could happen, where dreams came alive. A world where people believed a man could fly.

But that had been a long time ago, and while he'd been gone, something had happened. The world had kept moving, but that sense of wonder had begun to slip away. Too many things kept happening that chipped away at the old ways, leaving an increasingly cynical and pessimistic America where the bright one had once stood. The nation was bigger and richer than it had been in ages, but it had lost that sense of marvel. Perhaps that was why he and all the other heroes of his time had been relegated to legend, Clark mused. Maybe people these days just couldn't believe anymore.

But maybe if they could see it, hear it, get a taste of that old sense of amazement at what humanity and the universe could do, maybe there would be a chance to turn things around. It wasn't something you could do with money, or political power. What the nation – the world – needed was someone to trust, someone to look up to and believe in. A man that they believe could fly.

As a younger man, Superman doubted he would have been up to the challenge. For all his desire to help, for his unconquerable will, he still was just a young man, dealing with a young man's desires and a young man's problems. He didn't want to be to be seen; to do so would only place those he loved in danger. Besides, there were plenty of other people they could look up to directly; so long as the people of New York and America knew that Superman was watching over them, he didn't much care if they didn't get to know anything about him. But now…there wasn't anybody else to look up to. Just surgically altered movie stars, drug-popping athletes, and corrupt politicians.

And him.

But he was ready now. He was older, wiser, ready to put himself out there and let himself be seen. There was no secret identity left to cover, no wife or parents or best pal to watch out for. Just him. And a whole country that needed him. He was ready.

At least, he prayed that he was.

He wasn't sure how the best way to announce his message would be; all he knew was he needed to get it out to as many people as he could. He needed to be seen for it to work, and that meant confronting the cameras. He could, of course, go to the trouble of announcing a press conference ahead of time at some specific location, give the networks time to get all their camera crews and things set up ahead of time. But then they'd have the advantage, not him. Besides, Superman was never good with those sort of pre-arranged press events, especially with himself in the spotlight. He'd learned long ago that it was best to get the unpleasant things in life over with quick – that way, you spent less time worrying about them and more time enjoying life.

So, after a 30-second pit stop at the offices of the New York Daily News (despite the years, he still had an affection for the paper he'd once worked at), he slowly flew down to the intersection of Broadway and 42nd street. Times Square – center of the universe, as it broadly proclaimed. Superman had never seen the true center of the universe; he'd known men and women who had, whose exploits beyond this Earth made his life look like that of a traveling salesman, but he'd never seen it with his own two eyes. He wondered if it could be much more impressive than this. Superman slowly looped around above the streets below, listening in on the thousands of excited people watching him from the ground. He could hear the click of hundreds of camera shutters as tourists from all across the country snapped his picture, hear the murmers between people as they all asked a variation on the same question: what is he doing?

Superman glanced down the blocks to see camera crews shoving through the crowds from the network buildings right on the square, as well as reporters from network vans parked hastily along the roadside just beyond Times Square. Most of the police were too busy watching him to notice any parking infractions. He also saw even more thousands of people quickly streaming down the blocks towards the square, hoping to get a glimpse of him.

_If I don't do it soon, there's gonna be a panic. Better get this over with; there's enough people here._

Superman dropped to the ground on one of the islands separating the streets, and instantly found himself surrounded by a wall of people on every side of him. They didn't close in on him, as he'd half-expected; rather; they held back a few feet, eyes wide with shock – and even a bit of fear. Clark, for the hundredth time that day, remembered why he needed to do this. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began.

"I have a few words I'd like to say today."

The crowd went silent, and he continued.

"First of all, I'd like to apologize for my lengthy absence. I know it's been a long time; I know that most of you watching this have grown up in my absence, believing me to be a myth. The stuff of fairy tales. And that's part of the reason I've returned."

"I spent over fifty years away from this life, attending to other things. And in that time, I learned a lot – both about myself, and the world. But during my time away, things changed. Now, change is not a bad thing, in and of itself. Often times, it is a positive force. But this change was one that saddened me. It was the loss of hope out there in the world. Hope, I always believed, is the most powerful weapon humanity has to fight off the darkness; it's what makes us get up and fight when things can't seem any worse, what makes us challenge the way things are in order to fight for a better tomorrow. This country was founded on the idea of hope, hope that a free people could build a better society. And that hope is something that's been lacking lately, it's seemed."

"So today, I'm here to say that I want to change that. I know that no one man – not even a superman – can change the state of mind of an entire nation. It will take time, and it will take a little bit from all of us. But I'm here to say, I intend to start doing my part again. Hopefully, others will do their part as well. As such, I am effectively announcing my unretirement - plain and simply, I'm back. I can't be everywhere, and I can't do everything, but I'm going to be doing the best I can to help people in need and fight for truth, justice and the American Way again. And maybe – if everything goes as I'd like – I'll be able to bring a bit more hope into our world."

"Thank you."

And without another word, Superman kicked off into the sky, leaving the crowds far below to wonder. 


	5. Chapter 5

Over the following weeks, Superman found himself as busy as he'd ever been. As if trying to make up for all the disasters he'd missed over his years in self-imposed exile, the universe seemed to be throwing a greater-than-normal level of problems for a Superman to fix. But now, freed from the constraints of having a secret identity, Superman found it far easier to respond quickly to whatever issues might crop up.

On the first Tuesday since his reappearance, a freighter smashed into a hidden reef seven hundred miles off the coast of Baja California. Superman managed to get there about seven minutes after the event happened, and was able to keep the ship from sinking by bending as much of the hull back into place as possible before towing the ship into the nearest port by its anchor cable. The whole thing took several hours, mostly due to the amount of time needed to tow the ship into dock, but Superman was all too happy to do it.

On Thursday, a Boeing 767-300 lost both engines at 32,000 feet over eastern Siberia en route from Chicago to Hong Kong. Superman managed to get to the plane when it was at about 25,000 feet; he lifted the plane onto his back and flew it into Tokyo International for repairs.

Friday brought with it a runaway freight train in the Rockies, and it took most of Superman's strength to bring the train to a halt before it careened off a patch of rail that had been washed out during the spring thaw. It was the first time in fifty years that Clark had found himself actually…tired. _It feels good to be tired again_, he thought.

On Sunday, Superman helped protect the Indonesian coast from a particularly lethal typhoon that had already wiped out several ships out at sea. Stopping a typhoon was beyond even his abilities, but Superman was able to help out in other ways; breaking up tornadoes that formed in the storm, diverting flooding rivers away from populated areas, pulling people out of wind-ravaged buildings and getting them to safe ground. All in all, it was estimated that his actions saved between five and ten thousand lives.

Tuesday brought with it a challenge that Superman hadn't had experience with, though he'd figured it would have been inevitable. An Islamic radical group had been planning a series of suicide bombings in London, designed to demoralize the nation. Superman had just happened to be stopping by to get some lunch when he'd overheard the first man's heartbeat, running over 150 beats per minute as he'd walked down the street; a quick glance with X-ray vision had revealed the worst, and Superman had disarmed the man before he had a chance to self-detonate. The man had quickly confessed the planned locations and time of the bombings after Superman had hauled him atop the nearest clocktower and given him a taste of the view; Superman had then quickly brought the man to the nearest police, before moving off to intercept the other terrorists. None of them, ultimately, had enough warning to detonate before they found themselves unconscious.

Wednesday brought a sudden crisis on the International Space Station; a cabin module had sprung an unexpected leak, and was rapidly venting pressure to the vacuum outside. Superman was able to patch it up easily with a little heat vision. Life was getting back to the way it had always been, and that suited Clark very well indeed.

In Washington, D.C., however, things were in a much less pleasant state. The sudden reappearance of America's greatest hero had left just about every politician clamoring for an endorsement from the Man of Tomorrow. Polls had said that the American people supported Superman's return by an unprecedented margin – over nine to one were happy that he'd returned – which meant that just about every elected official on Capitol Hill was trying to get themselves associated with him.

The President, however, had another concern. The Man of Steel's reappearance was not entirely unexpected; the continued presence of superhumans on America's soil was something of which his national security advisor kept him very closely advised. They didn't actively tail Superman, of course; that was part of a deal going back over five decades, a deal long since relegated to the depths of time but not forgotten by those in power. After all, parts of that deal were still making themselves known to this day. But someone like Superman couldn't really exercise his powers without being detected on some level, not often – and not in the borders of the United States. NORAD had over a hundred recorded flight paths over the last twenty years of what could only be the Man of Steel. In addition, there were Richter Scale readings, satellite images which just happened to catch an "unexpected" human form…the world was too small a place for someone like Superman to truly hide.

But now, he was back, and that left the President with a problem that none of his predecessors had needed to actively confront:

How do you stop the most powerful man on Earth?

It was a problem that was even more apparent now than it was in the 1940s, thanks to Superman's increased public role. Now that he was spending more and more time in his costumed identity, he was becoming more active than he ever had been before – making the potential step to messiahdom that much closer, the President reasoned. His advisors agreed.

"Mister President, now that he's seemingly spending all his time as a superhero, he's that much more vulnerable to turning against us – deciding that the best way to keep us safe is to play Big Brother. How do we know if he won't turn against us, now that his link to the real world is gone?" the Secretary of Defense asked.

The harsh light of the Situation Room only served to emphasize the wrinkles that arose on the chief of staff's head in her confusion. "Hold on a second. What do you mean, 'now that his link to the real world is gone'? What changed?"

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs harrumphed. "His wife died, that's what changed. Didn't you read the report?"

"She never got the report." The President cut off his chief of staff before she could open her mouth. She glared at him – a gaze that she and she alone was allowed to give to the President.

"Jesus Christ, Chris," she said, addressing the President by his first name, "you knew who his wife was and you didn't tell me? I'm supposed to know these sorts of things, sir."

"I know, Pat, and I'm sorry. It's just that this is absolutely highest-level top secret information, and nobody wanted it getting out-"

"So you cut me out of the loop?"

The President sighed. "We didn't think it would ever come up. Until a week ago, there were only a dozen people in Washington who even knew the old guy was still alive. It's been that was since LBJ, and we wanted to keep it that way. This just happened to blow up in our faces, and we weren't ready for it. Nobody could have seen this coming."

"Well, maybe if we'd kept a tail on the guy we would have…" The SecDef mumbled, just loud enough to be heard.

"Oh, come on, Frank," the Joint Chiefs growled. "You know that would be damn near impossible. The guy can hear someone talking miles away, he can see through walls, he can move faster than the eye– how are you supposed to tail someone like that?"

"It was always out of the question – that was part of the deal he made with Truman. When he disappears, he's gone. No questions. It's the least the country owed him. For what he did, he deserved a goddamn ticker-tape parade from Bangor to Long Beach. But he just wanted to slip away." The President's voice had a note of compassion in it.

To his right, however, his chief of staff shook her head in confusion. "Everybody hold up a second. Someone needs to fill me in on what we're talking about, and I mean now."

The president sighed. "You're right, Pat. You're absolutely right."

"It all started back in 1918, on the night of August 18, when a rocketship landed in the field of two Kansas farmers: John and Martha Kent…"

Over twenty minutes, the story of Superman unfolded over the conference table. Between the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they were able to fill in the whole story for the chief of staff. How the young child was adopted by the farm couple who found him, and given the name Clark Kent. How his parents died when he was sixteen, four months apart, and he wandered the world for years afterwards. How at age twenty he showed up for the first time in New York City, getting a job at the New York Daily News as a reporter. At the same time, he started running around in the red-and-blue bodysuit that made him instantly famous as the heroic Superman. How he fell in love with a fellow reporter named Lois Lane. How other incredibly powerful men and women began to appear, as if by magic, summoned by his appearance. The Bat-Man, his true identity unknown, more legend than man, of Chicago. The Flash, a college student named Jay Garrick, living out of Kansas City; he could run at seemingly impossible speeds. Wonder Woman, who went by the name Diana Prince, of San Francisco, seemingly appearing and disappearing into thin air to fight crime with strength that rivaled Superman's. And the Green Lantern, an engineer named Alan Scott, who guarded over Los Angeles with a glowing green ring of incredible power. These heroes and more appeared, and they began saving people. Sometimes, they would meet and work together; other times, they found they had more differences than similarities and went along their separate ways. But for the most part, they were content to remain who they were, and to save people.

Then came Pearl Harbor. With it, the government found itself pressed into action, a war suddenly on two fronts. FDR met with the heroes, pled with them personally to aid in the war effort – to help America win. According to the story, Roosevelt managed to get up out of his wheelchair long enough to fall to his knees to beg for the heroes' help. But they were of one mind, agreed on this: this was not their war to fight. Gods, they supposedly said, were not meant to fight the wars of men.

The government was, of course, outraged. But what could they do? They couldn't draft them, not like they could ordinary men. They would need an entire army just to try and bring one of the heroes down. That left propaganda. They tried to paint the heroes as Nazi infiltrators, designed to make Americans lazy and dependent, but it didn't stick. The people needed to believe in these heroes, needed the hope they brought in the desperate times. So, eventually, the government gave up – decided to rededicate themselves to fighting the war. And they managed to win it on their own, as everyone knew. With war's end came peace, it seemed, at least for a while. But it wasn't to last.

In late 1945, the U.S. discovered something massive coming at Earth from outer space. They asked Superman to go up and look at it, see what it was; it seemed too irregular to be an asteroid or comet. He did so, only to return with frightening news: it wasn't one object, it was an armada. Ten thousand alien warships, from the size of Volkswagens to the size of battleships, all headed for earth. Each one bearing a dark swastika on its side.

The Bat-Man quickly went to Europe, taking with him the Flash and a few OSS men to help him gather information to explain this seemingly impossible turn of events. He discovered files, locked away in a safe in Berlin, detailing a plan so spectacular it seemed out of science fiction. Hitler had, since he came to power, been attempting to contact extraterrestrial life for some unknown scheme locked away only in his mad mind. In 1941, he had succeeded. He communicated with the aliens for several years, through the war, establishing a dialogue. Two weeks before his death, when he knew he was finished, he sent out one final message, asking his new allies to finish what he started. Apparently, they decided he was right.

The government had no idea what to do. If they told everyone, there would be global panic; people remembered Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds radio drama quite well, and knew that the last thing they needed was the entire planet going crazy. But they had no way of fighting the ships on their own, not until they reached Earth – and odds were good, they wouldn't be able to do much good against them anyway. So did the last thing they could think of:

They asked the superheroes for help.

The heroes were only too happy to oblige, and their task was quickly outlined for them. Since only Superman and Green Lantern could operate in the vacuum of space for long, they were to be sent in as a first strike option – devastate as many of the alien ships as possible while they were still away from Earth. Once on the planet, the other heroes could engage the menace. Hopefully, combined with conventional forces, it would be enough. It was a long shot – but it was the only shot.

Or so it seemed, until a mere twelve hours before the operation was scheduled to commence. It was then that word of another secret weapon finally reached the higher ups, one which might have a chance of leveling the playing field. A weapon that was entirely experimental, but might be able to level the playing field:

A hydrogen bomb.

It had never been tested, but the scientists at Los Alamos had managed to put together not one, but two prototype H-bombs. The plan was quickly revised: Superman and Green Lantern would take the two improvised weapons with them, place them in the center of the armada, then detonate them to winnow down the numbers. It gave them a fighting chance, which was all they could hope for.

Once out there, though, things went very bad, very quickly. Superman and Green Lantern found themselves under heavy fire well before they expected anything. Green Lantern's ring wasn't up to the challenge of protecting him as well as he'd thought it would, not against the concentrated blasts of the alien fleet – and he died, shot to pieces despite Superman's best efforts to save him. The Man of Steel was enraged; he dove into the center of the fleet, a H-bomb in each hand, dropping them in the center of the fleet as best before tearing his way out through as many ships as possible.

When the bombs went off, however, they were far more powerful than the scientists had expected. The combined blast reached well past six megatons, literally vaporizing most of the fleet. The battered remnants turned around and retreated as soon as they were able. Superman, battered and bruised, returned to Earth with Green Lantern's body. It was then that he forged his pact with Truman himself: no more deals, no more government operations. And when he wanted to dissapear, he'd be able to, as well as all the heroes – they would be able to just slip away.

Six months later, Superman killed his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor. He took his escape clause, and went back to being who he'd been before he ever put on his blue-and-red: Clark Kent. He went on to marry his girlfriend, and they lived together in anonymous peace.

With Superman gone, the other heroes began to fade away, as well. Maybe they didn't want to go on without their "leader;" maybe they'd just gotten sick of the life. Things hadn't been the same ever since Green Lantern died among them, and it wasn't much of a surprise when they started going back to where they'd come from. It was then that the government seized upon what some saw as the ultimate revenge. They decided that, if the heroes wanted anonymity, they'd be only too happy to help. So they began to erase any proof that the heroes ever existed. In the days before computers, it wasn't too hard; the right words here and there, the right people paid, the right files and papers destroyed. Within ten years, it was as if the heroes had never existed. They became just what such people had always been: legends.

"But now, they're back." The chief of staff broke the long silence at the end of the tale.

The Secretary of Defense nodded. "If history repeats itself, as it tends to, then whoever out there has these sorts of powers will probably leap on Superman's example and go public now. They'll look up to him. Admire him. Idolize him, even."  
The Joint Chiefs finished the thought: "Enough to go to anybody's head."

The President glanced around the table. "You think we need some way of grounding him. Keeping him tied to humanity."

"It's the best way of making sure he doesn't go against us," the SecDef agreed.

The chief of staff smiled. "I know just what to do."


End file.
